272) Happy birthday, Clara

I love that my trans birthday is on pi day. I didn’t even realize it, at the time of my “waking up”. It was a year later, last year, when I realized the rather funny synchronicity of the day I came “full circle”. I was going through photos and found the one I had taken in the mirror at the very time when I was consciously realizing the up-to-that-moment-unthinkable truth, that I am a woman.

I had been quite depressed and really distressingly not-very-stable, for the 6 months preceding that day.  I didn’t know why, but it had been the previous summer when I first realized that “deep down inside”, something was off, and I felt, without any understanding at the time, that there was a suppressed femininity in my basic personality structure.  But, yes, like I said, I didn’t understand it, didn’t know what it meant, and without any sort of cognitive clarity, I just slowly unravelled.  It’s hard to explain why exactly, but when you are disconnected from yourself, and you become inescapably aware of that, but are unable to do anything to FIX it, the state of dissonance becomes overwhelming.

I had first thought it was some archetypal personality growth thing, something spiritual maybe? Something mid-life-crisis-y?  Or maybe the “Divine Feminine” rising in me or something equally abstract and undefinable?  I tried reading some Jung first, thinking maybe the anima and animus archetypes would shed some light, but quickly felt that I was, in fact, simply defending myself through hyper-intellectualization, and instead, what was going on was deeply and directly embodied and would have to be approached at that level to understand it.

So I experimented with my own embodiment that summer, as I’ve written about in my blog.  THAT was very enlightening, and helped to clarify that indeed, “something feminine” was built into my physiology that I had neglected, but that was it.  I didn’t know what to DO with that awareness.  

I tried, once, wearing make-up.  Even got a lesson from some nice lady at a Shopper’s Drug Mart in Orillia so I would have some clue what to do.  Tried it.  Didn’t like it at all.  “Dan” most definitely didn’t want to wear make-up.  “He” wasn’t a cross-dresser or interested in playing the role of a woman, wearing women’s clothes, or trying to alter “his” physical appearance to appear feminine.  Not interested.  At all.  So that wasn’t it.

I had tried talking to a confidant about it.  That went…horrendously.  I won’t elaborate any further on that experience.  Suffice it to say, I was horribly ashamed of myself afterwards and went into hardcore denial.

So back underground it went, and “Dan” simply spiralled into something far beyond despair.  Really, in retrospect, I can understand now that it was the desire to be destroyed.  Literally.  Although I also knew that I couldn’t actually do that to myself, as I do have people who love me and who wouldn’t want me to disappear from their lives, and indeed, I love them and wouldn’t want that either.  So, I was stuck — not wanting to live, not wanting to die.  

The dissonance was constant, impossible for me to understand, and all consuming.  Night and day were indistinguishable for the most part.  I would sleep randomly, only for a couple of hours, and then be awake again and….frozen, trapped in inescapable dissonance.  I knew, based on having gone through suicidal periods in the past, that this was Not Good, and sooner or later, the bottom was going to fall out.  

It’s astonishing to me, looking back, that I had no notion that I was trans.  I didn’t think it was possible, at 50, to “suddenly realize” you were transgender.  I didn’t even really consider the possibility with any seriousness.  It was just “not possible”, so there must be some other explanation….

Until a day in February where I happened upon a blog post about “gender dysphoria.”  I guess the algorithms took me there and out of curiousity I clicked it.  

And then I knew, without a doubt, that I was trans, and astonishingly to me, that I always had been.  

I was in a daze for a few weeks, my mind a kaleidoscope, a billion pieces of this jigsaw puzzle that had always been my life, and had never made any sense to me at all, suddenly formed a picture, the picture that had been RIGHT THERE, just beyond my comprehension, for my whole life.  

It was very much like your life flashing before your eyes, but it went on constantly, day and night, whether I was awake or whether I was dreaming, flooding me with memories that suddenly made sense in a whole different way, mysteries about my experiences, especially as a young child, that I had no ability to comprehend at the time, but suddenly were explained perfectly, one single Occam’s Razor-winning explanation that brought clarity where there had always been puzzlement, a sense of REALLY not fitting in with other people, and, well, shame.  

Realizing I am trans was the most surprising thing that ever happened to me in my life, and also the thing that has made more sense than anything.  

But it still took a few weeks before “I am trans” revealed to be what that truly meant.  It’s funny, looking back, that it was such a long intellectual journey.  It seems so simple now, but then again, as I have seen people who are resistant to the fact that there are not simply two genders, struggle with understanding and generally refusing to do so no matter what, I can have some empathy for my prior self and the difficult I had in “figuring it all out.”

So yes, it was March 14th, pi day, when I was staring in the mirror in the bathroom, my face pressed up very close, looking at the lines of depression in my face, the dark caverns of my eyes, the bags of exhaustion underneath them, looking right into my own eyes, looking, looking.  

It felt like if I just LOOKED carefully enough, I would find “myself”, whatever that means exactly.  I would resolve whatever this inner inexplicableness was.  And truly, from my heart I can say, I was looking for some way to stop hating the person looking back at me.  Was there anything in those eyes that was…worthy?  Was there any spark of something real, someone Good?

And it hit me.  Literally in an instant.

I pulled back a couple of steps and looked at myself more entirely.  I knew what I was about to say, and it seemed…insane.  But, there it was, right there in front of me.

“I’m a….girl?” I tried.  It felt weird.  I tried to smile.  It didn’t work.

“I’m a girl,” I said again.  Flatly, like stating a basic fact like 1+1=2.  I didn’t really ‘believe’ it, because my conceptual mind still didn’t know how to make sense of it at all.  

But there it came anyway — joy.  Pure, wild, giddy, ridiculous joy.  Like a flood.  The proverbial “dam bursting”.  The veil lifting.  It was just absolutely and undeniably true.  Whether I understood it or not, there it was, staring me in the face.  Literally.

“I’m a girl!!” I practically shouted, laughing out loud in my bathroom.  

And on a whim, I grabbed my phone and took a picture of myself in the mirror, knowing with some vague awareness that this was a moment I would want to look back on, the moment I truly “woke up” and realized who I was.  

A year or so later, while going through my phone, I found that picture.  

March 14.  “Pi day!” I laughed.

* * * * *

Looking back over these 2 years, I have to say, they’ve been the best years of my life.  Not in terms of grand adventures or travels or whatever; I didn’t exactly become a world-traveller these years, unless a couple of road trips to Guelph and Huntsville count.  No, the past 2 years I’ve stayed pretty close-to-home, doing pretty much “normal life things”.  And yet, honestly I have never been so happy and thrilled with my days.  Joy depends not at all, on the external circumstances of your life matching some adventure-fantasy.

Instead, rooted in authentic self-acceptance, in easy, free, love for your life, Joy is just there, moment by moment, from when you first open your eyes, to the middle of slurping your bowl of noodles, to walking down the street, to watching some TV show, to talking with a friend or reading a book.  It’s just there.

It’s like how, when you wake up in the springtime and the windows are open, you hear birds.  You just do.  They’re just there, singing.  Even on what might be a really tough day in your life, the birds sing.

And my heart feels like that now.  It’s very…simple. Astonishingly simple.

And yes, living authentically DOES bring blessings into your life as well.  I met the love of my life a few months after my trans-awakening, and experienced an ease of being in a relationship that I had no conception of before.  I always thought relationships were “so much work”.  And I don’t think that anymore.  I think relationships that you are trying to make work, ARE so much work.  

But love?  When you are both fully present in your authenticity?  When there is no need to be anything but honest, kind, open with each other?  It hasn’t been “work” at all.  It’s been more like singing in the shower, or like birdsong outside the window in the spring.  

And she, my partner, is an incredible person.  I have never felt so seen, so safe, so utterly unconstrained in simply being who I am.  We laugh, all the time, whether it’s the middle of the night and we’re still awake “for some reason”, or whether we’re in the grocery store, or sitting at home eating dinner, or really, anywhere and everywhere.  The ease with which laughter erupts between us is just beautiful.  And why not?  If you truly LOVE the person you are with, why wouldn’t you simply feel joy at being together?  They are “your person”, after all….

I’ve also, as a result of transitioning, met some truly beautiful friends, and deepened friendships with many others.  Moments spent with people are…easy now.  There’s no striving, no posturing, no trying-to-impress, no hiding.  It’s just…real.  

Some of this enriching of my social world has been the result of chess and meeting a lot more people, as my newfound liking-of-myself has taken me into new hobbies and thereby introduced me to an entirely new community (new for me, that is; I think chess predates my trans-ness….lol….).  

Some of it has been the result of having conversations with people literally about being trans, which tends to lead to a deepening of intimacy quite naturally.  (Unless they’re an ass, in which case it leads to a “rapid unscheduled disassembly”, like Elon Musk’s rockets.) 

Some of it has been the result of the LGBTQ+ community introducing me to a whole world of truly lovely people.  And some of it has to do with the “sisterhood”, that I wrote about shortly after transitioning and has also been one of the most delightful social discoveries of my life.  

So for a variety of reasons, I have found my life extremely socially enriched, as a result of realizing my trans-ness.  Which I have to say, was the complete opposite of my expectations.  The online vibe and media narrative tends to create nothing but fear about coming out as trans, and I expected that I would mainly lose friends, mainly fear people, and mainly find my social world shrinking into a small bubble of like-minded people.  But no, it’s been the complete opposite of that, and THAT is a realization I would share far and wide — MOST people are not only “accepting”, as though you have some revolting disease but they tolerate you because it’s the ethical thing to do.  NO!  Most people are LOVELY, and for the most part other than perhaps some curiosity, don’t give a fuck at all about what your gender is; if you’re happy, if you’re a good person, then cool.  Live and let live.  This has been my experience of most people.  

(There are exceptions, of course, and those can be truly horrible.  But 1) they are rare, and the sadness, bitterness or anger-prison of those small-minded people is palpably obvious; and 2) it’s my “birthday” today so we won’t dwell on the tiny minority of shitty people!).

* * * * *

So, after two years of living authentically and taking my place in this world as a woman, I thought I’d share a few reflections on my life-as-a-trans-woman.  I’m SO GRATEFUL to being having this time to experience what life feels like when you truly love yourself.  It’s a wonderful gift, being alive, and when you simply root yourself in Who You Really Are, feeling gratitude, feeling joy, feeling love, and feeling LUCKY to be alive and to get to experience this beautiful world, is effortless.  

I think that is our natural state of being.  

But whatever it is, it’s pretty awesome.  

Thank you for reading this, and sharing for a moment, in my birthday.  I’m 2!  Who knew?

;)